We will start today???s Ben Ball round up with some really cool news out of Oregon. A : Oregon's athletic director has apologized to UCLA for the behavior of Ducks fans toward Bruins freshman Kevin Love last week. Pat Kilkenny left messages Monday for coach Ben Howland athletic director Dan Guerrero and Love's father Stan who starred for Oregon in the early 1970s. You have to tip your hat to Kilkenny for that move. Well done and I think that will make lot of Ducks??? alums proud. For our part let???s move on. We also have some good news from our team. Luc is back in practice. From sounds like he is doing all right and will play against ASU tomorrow night: Starting forward Luc Richard Mbah a Moute who sat out games last week against Oregon and Oregon State because of a concussion returned to practice Tuesday and was expected to play Thursday night when the Bruins play Arizona State at Pauley Pavilion. Mbah a Moute averaging 9.5 points and 5.2 rebounds was cleared after a CT scan came back negative Coach Ben Howland said. The 6-foot-8 junior was injured Jan. 19 against USC and hadn't practiced until a light workout Monday. "He worked out for about an hour and felt fine afterward so hopefully he'll have a good result again " Howland said before practice. "I definitely feel better " Mbah a Moute said. "There isn't anything you can do about a concussion. You just go out there and play." Luc???s return will be a huge boost to our defense as we have discussed a number of times in last few days. Also speaking of injuries apparently Howland told reporters that from returning. Roll will redshirt. Folks I have to say I trust A???s hunches on stuff like this a lot. So I am not going to hold my breath over Roll???s return at this point. Speaking of returning some : The chances of UCLA losing multiple underclassmen to the NBA draft is high especially in the cases of projected mid-level first-round picks Love and point guard Darren Collison but junior wing Josh Shipp said not to count him in the mix of players who could leave early. "I'll be here " Shipp said. "I have another year of basketball. Why wouldn't I want to play at UCLA? I'm here at UCLA it's a great place and I enjoy my time here. I definitely would love to stay here." Shipp who is UCLA's second-leading scorer at 14.2points per game is projected as a middle second-round selection in several mock drafts. I have to say I am pleasantly surprised by this. I thought Shipp would be gone for sure/ Who knows if he blows up down the line he still may go. But Coach Howland has to be really happy about this. Shipp and Westbrook (if he comes back next season as well) will be the man and focal point of our offense and will provide key veteran leadership and experience to guide all the young cubs who are coming in next season. But this is exciting stuff nonetheless. Speaking of exciting stuff looks like in person this Saturday at Pauley. are : ESPN's College Game Day for basketball will originate from Pauley Pavilion this Saturday. It begins at 8 a.m. but don't pack your gear just yet. UCLA is allowing only members of the "The Den '' which is the student section in for the game. I was told the decision was made independent of the men's basketball program and a UCLA official said the decision was made as a way to reward the students. We will be very interested to hear what the Den has planned for this. So guys as always use this place to get the word out and we will do what we can to help you out. And remember ??? Digger still sucks. GO BRUINS.

Wow this writers' strike needs to end like now. It's one thing for Ellen DeGeneres to highlight her love of Guitar Hero by jamming through a song on her show. But now she's roping in kids from YouTube to play a video game. At least that's what I thought before watching the video but I totally changed my mind after seeing 12-year-old Kevin Shen wailing on expert in the video. I think it's wonderful that Ellen is giving such positive press to video games and Shen he got to stand in front of an audience of screaming women and pretend to play guitar. Pretty kick ass.

I know.. the site has been dreadfully slow lately. There really just isn't anything interesting to talk about. I mean everyone is tired of steroids/clemens/tejada/mitchell report etc... and if you're not then you are either A)not actively watching sportscenter/reading about sports or B) have mental health issues. Okay the B) part is probably just me being mean but you get the drift. For lack of anything better to post here take this little tidbit of information that you probably already knew about. From : The Astros added two more players to the mix on Tuesday when they inked right-hander Brian Moehler and infielder/outfielder David Newhan to Minor League contracts. Both have received invitations to Major League Spring Training. Moehler 36 returns to the Astros after spending the 2007 season with the club as a member of the bullpen. He was 1-4 with a 4.07 ERA while appearing in a career-high 42 games. Whoopidy doo dah. TBurford says " Pitchers and catchers report in less than a month. I love just saying it. " And we love hearing it. I'm so ready for something other than steroids... it will be nice to have some actual baseball being played even if they are in meaningless(statistically) games. So is anyone thinking about making a trip to spring training? I'm sure Rastro will make a few games... hopefully he'll drop buy and give us a story or two. Me personally I've never gotten a chance to go to spring training. I almost did last year but unfortunately plans fell through and I didn't get to go. But one day I will. In some non-Astros related news the Mets look to have sealed the deal in getting Santana... but there is a catch. At a seemingly reasonable price swift outfielder Carlos Gomez and young pitchers Philip Humber Kevin Mulvey and Deolis Guerra the Mets have satisfied the Twins. Now they have three days beginning Tuesday to satisfy Santana who armed with a no-trade clause that can be as effective in these circumstances as his world class changeup can veto the trade if the Mets don't make him happy. From . Hello 5 years 100 million dollars?

Posted by Kevin O?Keefe: ?Stole that subject line from 'Learn to Love Social Network Sites ' Mary Braid's story in this...

Adnan Ghalib Britney Spears paparazzi boyfriend (or ex-boyfriend depending what day it is) has six video diaries of Britney that he???s shopping around for $2 million. He???s holding onto clips four and five for now but here???s a supposed rundown of the clips that show Britney is definitely out of it. Or really really good at acting crazy. reports:

Bumped from the diaries. GO BRUINS. -N Cross-posted from . N if I'm doing this incorrectly please let me know. Thanks. -UB Editor's note: If you're interested at all in the sabermetrics number stuff that follows in this post please feel free to check out my blog which Nestor was kind enough to BlogRoll earlier this month. I'm putting up a big post there with regards to this year's UCLA team vs. last year and why OJ Mayo barely even deserves to be in his team's starting 5 much less its main star. It's a bit too tables-and-numbers-heavy for a diary which is why I'm sticking it over there. As for what's going on here... Read on if you will. I thought I'd chime in with a few observations. Humor me please. First it's great to see Darren Collison getting back to the form we all believed he could and would display all season. I was of the opinion that he had never fully healed from his knee injury and it's only been in the past few games that he's really started to look like the Collison of last season. Much more aggressive in the lane more willing to push off his knee for those little floaters in the lane and to elevate on his outside jumpers. Anybody who has played basketball knows how in truth shooting form starts not from the arms but from the legs. Even a tiny tweak can be enough to throw off a player like Darren whose shooting method is already slightly unorthodox. So major kudos to him for his inspired play this weekend and I have full confidence that he is beginning to once again trust in his knee. Just a great sign. Second Kevin Love. We all knew he was going to be good but I'm not sure we realized just how good. Depending on your personal view of the importance of possession usage Kevin Love is either the best third best or 19th best offensive player in the country. Slightly confused? I'll try to explain. For those of you not familiar with his work Ken Pomeroy is THE name in modern (read: moderately sabermetric-style) basketball statistics. In addition to his site he is one of the head writers for which is a must-read for unique takes on the game. With regards to his methodology one stat he uses is ORtg or 'Offensive Rating ' a stat that addresses the number of points a player produces if he were to use 100 possessions. Anyway at KenPom.com he lists the top players in the country in Offensive Rating - in other words the best in the country at producing points for their teams. Kevin Love is the #1-ranked offensive player in the country measuring players who use 24% of their team's offensive possessions and up (in other words star players). He's a small distance in front of UNC's own Psycho T. The two are a fairly sizable distance in front of every other player on that list. If you'd like to peruse the full list (really quite interesting) you can find it . The first list on that page is players who use more than 28% of their team's possessions. See Mayo OJ who is below the league average efficiency of 101 despite using 30% of his team's offensive opportunities - K-Love is at almost 130. Love despite his extremely high efficiency barely misses that 28% 'superstar' watermark using 27.3%. If he clears the 28% usage mark he'll be leading that list as well and by a very significant margin. A team of 5 Kevin Loves would outscore the current top 'superstar'-usage player by over 12 points in an average UCLA game. One note: the list linked above was updated last Sunday the 20th and the new one has not come out as of the writing of this post. I'll update this diary with the new listings once it does but I can't imagine Love's scores doing anything but rising given his dominance this past weekend. (The formula for this value ORtg is quite complex. It's possible to actually derive the full formula for free online with a lot of digging but since its progenitor Dean Oliver released a book on that subject I'll avoid posting it here. Suffice to say that it basically assigns a point value to each assist 2- or 3-point basket and offensive rebound then adjusts it for how many possesions the player uses to get those stats and multiplies by a hundred... I think. I could be remembering slightly wrong to be honest. Anyway if you're really interested go buy Oliver's Basketball on Paper HIGHLY recommended and sadly underrated by the casual basketball saber community. Or get The Wages of Wins much more famous book by David Berri. Alternatively leave me a comment or shoot me a message/email and I'll send you some links - the stuff's actually a really interesting point of discussion if you ask me. Anyway tangent over sorry.) As to the slightly worrisome - UCLA is shooting too many 3s. I know you don't want to hear it but somebody has to say it. The Bruins are loosing FAR too many outside shots and they're lucky that the addition of Love means that he's able to go and get plenty of their misses as one of the best offensive rebounders in the country. UCLA is in 3-point shooting percentage in the Pac-10 only ahead of woeful Oregon State. As a team the Beavers are shooting under 28% from 3 that's like an entire team of Mbah a Moutes launching 18 3s a game (shows how they were hitting rather lucky tonight against UCLA). No offense Luc but yikes. But the Bruins are of the Pac in 3-point attempts even throwing them up more often than UofA and UW teams generally considered much more run-and-gun than the Bruins. And teams that are much more accurate from there than UCLA as well. This past game against OSU was a perfect example. The team went 3-15 from the field against the Beavers. And somewhat ironically the only player who had a good shooting night from outside was Darren at 2-3. I say somewhat ironic given that he spent much of the evening beating his defender off the dribble and getting to the line (14-14 on free throws is just awesome btw). The rest of the team was a combined 1-12 despite the fact that the team was 24/39 from the floor on 2-point baskets. The point being that unless somebody gets hot (see Shipp during the Bay-area road trip) it's generally not worth it for the team to chuck up a bunch of outside shots given how effective Love and the team as a whole can be from inside the arc. Anyway time to get ready for "The Standard" next week. Very solid road trip and here's hoping the Bruins come out fired up to start a new winning streak at Pauley.

Let??s start with our (fresh)man in the middle. Kevin Love was named : UCLA center Kevin Love has been named the U.S. Bank Pacific-10 Conference Men's Basketball Player of the Week for Jan. 21 - 27 Commissioner Tom Hansen announced today. Love a freshman from Lake Oswego Ore. led the Bruins to two road wins last week at Oregon and Oregon State. In the 80-75 win against the Ducks Love scored 26 points and broke his own UCLA record with 18 rebounds. He made 8-of-11 (.727) shots from the field including both three-pointers he attempted. At Oregon State Love scored 16 points and improved his total rebounding record to 21 becoming the first Bruin to record more than 20 rebounds in a game in more than 30 years. The Bruins went on to defeat the Beavers 85-62. In the games last week Love recorded his 10th and 11th double-doubles of the year and averaged 21.0 points and 19.5 rebounds per game. He also shot 63.6 percent (14-for-22) from the field and 50.0 (2-for-4) from three-point range. This is the third weekly honor for Love and UCLA's 48th Player of the Week all-time. Would have been cool if Pac-10 made both KL and DC co player of the week. Oh well. For their efforts Bruins jumped . Elsewhere some encouraging notes re. the health of LM LRMAM and MR : With 12:05 to go in the first half UCLA center Lorenzo Mata-Real checked into the Bruins?? game against Oregon State. Mata-Real had been out since the USC game on Jan. 19 with a concussion and although he was projected as doubtful for the entire road trip he managed to suit up and contribute five points and five rebounds. He also threw down a couple of dunks that helped to contribute to the eerie silence of the Oregon State crowd. ??It felt really good to play ?? Mata-Real said. ??I worked on (those dunks) a little in warm-ups.?? With Mata-Real healthy forward Luc Richard Mbah a Moute (out with a concussion) improving enough to participate in pregame warm-ups before Saturday??s game and guard Mike Roll expected to be out just another two weeks the Bruins could finally be approaching full health again. Let??s hope Luc can return this week. We are not going to hold our breath and hope for Roll to rush back. But if he can make a return by the next road trip it would be a huge boost for our warriors. As I have said before MR impacts the team in many positive ways. He can knock down clutch shots (again watch the game against Pitt last year) hold his own on D get his team-mates involved and more importantly stabilize our rotation which has a net positive effect on the entire ream. His return will be a big boost for the team. Hope he heals up and can come back when he is ready. GO BRUINS.

Sam Lufti gave old Babara Walters a ring on the phone to keep Babs up-to-date on what was going down with the young Ms. Spears. You can be pretty sure when she was interviewing Castro and the like back in the day she never anticipated that she'd be with some schmuck-head like Sam Lufti about the "Oops I Did It Again" girl. On a recent episode of "The View " Barbara described Sam as Britney's "very good friend" and said that he revealed that the pop star was getting treatment for her "mental issues." According to Barbara "She I assume is starting some kind of treatment " as Sam said that she had been to a psychiatrist.

This is an informational site on UCLA Bruins Kevin Love. Check out our Kevin Love as well as our Kevin Love Stats.

National Basketball Recruiting Coverage - Recruiting Database ... Center Lake Oswego (OR) Lake Oswego AAU: SoCal All Stars. Ht: 6-foot-9 Wt: 240 lbs

video of UCLA basketball recruit Kevin Love ... Thank you for flagging this video. Content of this nature is not necessarily prohibited on YouTube, however we will review this ...

The UCLA Bruins Official Athletic Site, partner of CSTV Networks, Inc. The most comprehensive coverage of UCLA Bruins Athletics on the web. ... USA Basketball Competed at the 10th ...

NBA Draft scouting reports, mock drafts, articles on NBA Draft Prospects. Extensive high school, NCAA and international NBA draft coverage.

Kevin Wesley Love (b. September 7 , 1988 in Santa Monica, California ), is a college basketball player for the UCLA Bruins . ...

Dave Telep covers college basketball recruiting on the Scout.com Network. ... Kevin Love Scout.com Headlines: UCLA #4; Love Named Pac-10 POW The Bruins move up in both the AP and ...

Season Averages: SEASON: MIN: PTS: REB: AST: TO: A/T: STL: BLK: PF: FG% FT% 3P% PPS: 2007-2008: 28.2: 16.8: 10.2: 2.1: 2.2 .95 .3 .7: 1.8 .603 .785 .364: 1.89

Strengths: Bruising bigman with a great basketball IQ and feel for the game ... Extremely adept on the block. His post skills are at an NBA level right now

Click Here To Visit Kevin S Choose To Love Website

This is an informational site on UCLA Bruins Kevin Love. Check out our Kevin Love as well as our Kevin Love Stats.

National Basketball Recruiting Coverage - Recruiting Database ... Center Lake Oswego (OR) Lake Oswego AAU: SoCal All Stars. Ht: 6-foot-9 Wt: 240 lbs

video of UCLA basketball recruit Kevin Love ... Thank you for flagging this video. Content of this nature is not necessarily prohibited on YouTube, however we will review this ...

The UCLA Bruins Official Athletic Site, partner of CSTV Networks, Inc. The most comprehensive coverage of UCLA Bruins Athletics on the web. ... USA Basketball Competed at the 10th ...

NBA Draft scouting reports, mock drafts, articles on NBA Draft Prospects. Extensive high school, NCAA and international NBA draft coverage.

Kevin Wesley Love (b. September 7 , 1988 in Santa Monica, California ), is a college basketball player for the UCLA Bruins . ...

Dave Telep covers college basketball recruiting on the Scout.com Network. ... Kevin Love Scout.com Headlines: UCLA #4; Love Named Pac-10 POW The Bruins move up in both the AP and ...

Season Averages: SEASON: MIN: PTS: REB: AST: TO: A/T: STL: BLK: PF: FG% FT% 3P% PPS: 2007-2008: 28.2: 16.8: 10.2: 2.1: 2.2 .95 .3 .7: 1.8 .603 .785 .364: 1.89

Strengths: Bruising bigman with a great basketball IQ and feel for the game ... Extremely adept on the block. His post skills are at an NBA level right now

Click Here To Visit Kevin S Choose To Love Website